Mona Kuhn

The people in Mona Kuhn’s photographs are nude but not naked. Completely relaxed before the camera, they give the impression that nothing could clothe them better than their own skin. With a unique style, Kuhn’s intimate photographs of both young and old are sensual compositions of skin and wrinkles, light and shadow, gestures and gazes. She creates taughtly composed images which balance sharply rendered portraits against blurred backgrounds to lure the eye and provoke the imagination. A Los Angeles-based artist of German-Brazilian ancestry, Kuhn photographs in naturist communities in France. The models are her friends, and the resulting photographs reveal a comfortable and graceful intimacy between the artist and her subjects. Containing luscious young bodies that suggest the meditative repose of classical statuary, the mood is languorous, projecting an almost Edenic eroticism that is neither “sexy” nor exploitative.